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ENGINEERING

Six Months Of Rapid Safety Improvements

Acting as health and safety advisor across 63 substations in Ireland, our consultant proactively identified and closed five critical risks on high-voltage sites.

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Electrical substation audit, representative of the 63 Irish substations Coyle Group advised on
Industry
Engineering, Electrical Infrastructure
Location
Ireland (63 substations)
Year
To July 2021
Client
Major utility engineering firm (anonymised)
Coyle role
Health and Safety Advisor

The challenge

Advising Safety Across 63 Live Substations

Our Coyle Group consultant was engaged as the health and safety advisor for 63 substations in Ireland. Rather than simply keep the paperwork ticking over, he set out to make the workplace measurably safer, and moved quickly.

Safety on substations carries little margin for error. Workers can be exposed to high-voltage electricity, and a mistake or an accident can be fatal. That reality shaped every decision on the assignment, and it made proactively finding the gaps far more valuable than waiting for an incident to expose them.

What we found

Five Critical Risks

We observed five areas that presented critical risk to the client and their staff. Our consultant alerted client management to each one, agreed the response, and played a key part in putting it right.

  1. Client Agreement

    There was no written client agreement in place between the client and their customer. Without one, legal responsibilities are unclear, which matters most when an accident occurs. We drafted a client letter and got it signed off, resolving the gap altogether.

  2. Design Risk Assessment

    Construction designers were not fully complying with client procedures or the design risk assessment requirements of the construction regulations. We worked with the Asset Management team to develop a Design Standard Hazard Register so designers could eliminate or reduce risk across the design lifecycle.

  3. Emergency Plan

    Network technicians were operating mobile elevating work platforms (MEWPs) with no emergency plan, potentially breaching the Work at Height Regulations. We developed a revised national MEWP procedure with an emergency plan, a risk assessment, and a plan to train technicians for national rollout.

  4. Easy Access To Procedures

    Technicians did not have procedures easily to hand during substation maintenance, which high-risk work legally requires. We built a new maintenance risk assessment method statement (RAMS) template with the relevant procedures in an appendix, so they were always at hand and simple to use.

  5. Lift Plan

    The client Lift Plan needed more detail and sign-off by an appointed person (AP) to avoid breaching General Application Regulation 42 on planned lifting operations. We drafted a new, more detailed national Lift Plan and provided it to the client for AP approval.

What we did

Putting Safety First: Six Controls Delivered

Working alongside the client team, our consultant turned each finding into a concrete control. Several of these went beyond the local sites and put good practice in place across the whole organisation. This is the kind of forward-looking CDM advisory work that stops risk at the design and planning stage rather than on the day.

  • A client letter to clarify client responsibilities
  • A Design Standard Hazard Register for site-specific design risk
  • A national MEWP procedure and risk assessment, with an emergency plan
  • A plan to roll out national MEWP training once approved
  • A substation maintenance RAMS template with easy-access procedures
  • A new, more detailed national Lift Plan for AP sign-off

The Outcome On This Project

63
Substations advised across Ireland
High-voltage sites made measurably safer
5
Critical risks identified and actioned
From client agreements to lift planning
6
Safety controls and procedures delivered
Several rolled out nationwide by July 2021

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